A. Field of the Invention
B. Description of the Related Art
Many companies deal with marketing, and many companies use different mechanisms to try to ascertain the preferences of consumers so that they can more accurately market to the consumer.
Current television shows have increasingly begun to engage audiences through telephone and online call-in participation. For example, the American Idols® television show involves audience participation through telephone call-in, and online voting, for participats/contestants on the show.
With respect to the American Idol® television show, each contestant will be assigned their own toll-free number and text message short number during the performance show. To vote, an audience member will watch American Idol each week and dial the phone number of the contestant for whom they wish to vote. Or, cell phone users may text the word VOTE to the Text Messaging 4 digit short numbers promoted for each contestant. Voting will open at the end of each performance show.
During one season, there were two performance shows a week for audience members to vote on—Tuesday night featured the females and Wednesday night featured the males. After the Tuesday night show, audience members could vote for any of the females who performed. After the males performed on Wednesday night, the lines were open and the audience members had a chance to vote for any male contestant that performed that night. Audience members had at least two hours after the show to cast their vote before lines close. At the end of those first three weeks of voting, American Idol® had a Top 12, consisting of 6 males and 6 females and voting would then only take place at the end of every Tuesday night performance show.
Voting for American Idol® opens at the end of the performance show each week and stays open for at least 2 hours, subject to time zone restrictions. Outside of these times, the toll-free lines will play a busy signal and the call will not count as a vote. If a cell phone call or text message is placed outside of the vote window, the vote will also not count.
As part of the process to ensure that the American Idol® voting system is accurate and ready for the public to call and vote, a test window is built into the toll-free system.
During this test window, anyone calling the toll-free numbers from a phone with a West Coast area code will hear the ‘thanks for voting . . . ’ message. This vote window is for testing purposes only and any calls received during this time do not count as valid votes.
If an audience member is calling or text messaging from a cell phone and they are in a different time zone from their cell phone number, the systems will accept or reject the vote based on the time zone of the cell phone area code. For example, if the caller has a New York cell phone area code but is calling from Los Angeles, they will be voting outside the East Coast voting window and the vote will not be accepted.
At the end of the performance show each week, voting can begin and phone lines will be opened. Voting lasts for at least 2 hours, subject to local time zone restrictions, from the end of the show and during that time the audience member will hear a pre-recorded message thanking them for voting for their chosen contestant. Each contestant will have their own number read/shown on air, and the phone message will confirm for whom the audience member has voted. After the voting window, no more votes will be accepted and lines will play out a busy signal.
Audience members can vote by text message using their wireless phone keypad to write the message VOTE and sending it to a contestant number. This 4 digit contestant number, such as 5701, relates directly to the contestant of choice and will be displayed on the show.
Text message voting will open at the end of each performance show and stay open for at least 2 hours, subject to local time zone limitations. Voting will not be open during the show or outside the foregoing two hour time period determined by the area code on the wireless phone. Votes sent outside of the voting window will be invalid
The present invention provides a new and improved method for direct marketing to consumers based upon votes the consumer casts, and overcomes certain difficulties inlierent in the related inventions while providing better overall results.